EDITORIAL: Backlog in cluster mailboxes must end

By Enterprise editorial staff

Published 4:10 am, Wednesday, February 5, 2014

If there's anything worse than getting your mail from a "cluster box" at the end of the street instead of an individual mailbox by your door, it's not even having a cluster box nearby. Unfortunately, that's what thousands of people are going through in Texas and other states.

In The Woodlands, new residents are waiting six to eight months to get cluster mailboxes installed near them. In the meantime, they have to go to local post offices to pick up their mail, sometimes standing in lines for up to an hour.

That's inexcusable. The Postal Service used to manufacture the locks for the cluster boxes but decided to outsource the business. That's fine, but that switchover combined with shortages in mail carriers have produced major backlogs.

Problems like this don't encourage more people to use the Postal Service to move envelopes or boxes. Postal officials need to realize that and start providing better service.